Home Grown Fiber - Smoky arrives

Today I am grateful for air conditioning.  I am grateful that I have power to my house to run the air conditioning.  I am grateful that I have the money to pay for air conditioning.  I am grateful that I have a house to air condition.  Today I have friends who, due to weather conditions and out-of-control fires, don't have many of these things.  I am praying for them and those who are working to help them.

In order to cheer us up a little today, I will tell the story of my first fiber-producing animal.  Many years ago when my children were small, my husband was in the US Army.  Consequently we moved frequently.  I had decreed that we would have no pets because they were harder to move than children and children were hard enough.  The children were not happy about this.

One day in Spin-Off Magazine I read an article about angora rabbits.  The pictures were amazing - fluffy balls of fur that looked liked stuffed animals.  They were said to be very tame and friendly, easy to take care of, and came in lots of beautiful colors.  And the fiber was so very, very soft.   I was smitten.  As I looked at the pictures over and over, I told the children that if we ever got a pet, it would be an angora rabbit.  I had never seen an angora rabbit, so I wasn't in fear of running into one any time soon.

As happens in so many of my stories, my mother came to visit.  While she was there, we went to the Culpepper Sheep Show.  I was part of a sheep to shawl competition with my weaving guild, so while I was spinning, my mother and husband were taking the children around to see the animals and exhibits.  After about an hour, the children came running back to me with the amazing news that grandma was buying them a rabbit.  They were so excited.  I was not pleased with grandma.

When grandma arrived she told me that they had come upon a woman selling angora rabbits in a variety of colors.  The children had explained that they were the only pets that I would allow.  So, what could she do but buy them one.  To humor me, I could pick out the color.  I did like the idea of having a rabbit, but I hadn't planned on getting one right that day.  But what could I do?  I couldn't say no to either my mother or my happy children.

I took a break from spinning to see the rabbits.  It was love at first sight.  They were more enchanting in person than in the pictures.  It was hard to pick out the best one.  I finally selected a soft gray 4-month-old which we named Smoky.  The woman put a Sold sign on his cage and kept him for us until the end of the day.

When the contest was over (We won. My mother bought the shawl at the auction.), we went back and literally picked up our rabbit.  He was so snuggly.  We had nothing to put him in for the 2 hour drive home, so I held him on my lap.  He was a good little bunny and didn't try to move around much, but this is not the ideal way to transport a new pet. 

At home we put him in a cardboard box for the night, along with a bowl of water.  The lady we bought him from had given us some food until we could find a place to buy the right kind.  And that started our adventure with angora rabbits. 

Next - are they really that easy to take care of?

Go Far

Today I am grateful for my daughter, my oldest child.  From the time she could talk, she loved to sing.  She learned songs quickly and always sang on pitch.  At night when we put her to bed she would sing herself to sleep - sweet little toddler songs with made up words or no words at all, just singing.  When she was quiet we knew she was asleep.  She went on to major in Music Education and teach singing to elementary school children.  Now she has children of her own.  One evening when I was staying with her family, I listened in the hallway as she put her two little girls to bed.  Tears came to my eyes as she sang them to sleep with a beautiful soft lullaby.

Last month I was able to again visit my daughter and her family, this time to watch her and her two oldest children run in the Go Far 5K.  Go Far is a running program in the elementary schools in their area.  Each school has a running club that meets after school in the spring for half an hour.  They teach the children how to train for the race.  They start out running 3 minutes and walking 1 minute, repeating the pattern for the whole time.  They gradually increase the time spent running until they are running 14 minutes and walking 1 minute.

 In May is the 5K to celebrate their accomplishments.  Only the children and family members can run, no professionals.  Hundreds of children and their moms, dads, brothers, and sisters, maybe even some grandparents, all run together.  Everyone who finishes gets a medal.  The start times are staggered, with the fastest children going first.  The winner knows who he is, but no big deal is made of it.  Everyone is celebrated because they did a hard thing, and they learned how to really exercise.  I think it is a wonderful program.  It doesn't require a lot of money or equipment for the school or the parents, and the children feel a real sense of accomplishment.

 We started out bright and early on Saturday morning for the downtown race location.  We eventually found a parking place and followed the crowd to the starting area.  The runners went to their appointed place and I settle down to watch with my 6-year-old grandson.  We were the cheering section because he was too young to run yet and my knees just don't run any more.  We went to one side of the large courtyard and watched as each wave of runners started down the street and around the corner.  Then we walked the block to the other side and cheered them on as they came down another street.  After our favorite runners had gone past, we headed for the finish line to see everyone come home.  Most of the children sprinted at the end.  Most of the adults were quite tired.

My daughter and her children decided that they would stick together during the race.  But as the finish line approached, the 8-year-old speedster couldn't stand it any more.  He had to run and get to the end as fast as possible.  He finished well ahead of the others.  At the very end the 10-year-old sprinted past her mother, leaving my daughter to come in last in their family.  So much for sticking together.  But it was a great time for everyone.  I was so proud of them all.

New Weavers

Today I am grateful for tomatoes - homegrown, right out of the garden tomatoes.  You know what I'm talking about - the ripe juicy flavor that only comes out of the ground, not from the store.  I remember being a little girl working in my mother's garden.  We had picked the vegetables for the day and as we were going in the house, I asked her if I could eat a tomato, right then, like an apple.  She gave me one and I bit into it.  Juice squirted out and ran down my arm, but I didn't care.  It tasted so good, and I was hooked.  Even as a little child, I loved tomatoes.

Recently I had the opportunity to share my studio space with 13 little girls age 8-11 from out church.  They meet every other week to learn a new skill or do a service project.  On this evening they had come to learn about weaving.  We all crowded around the loom and I showed them how it worked - stepping on the treadles, throwing the weft, beating the yarn in.  They were enthralled.  Then they all tried on shawls and became fashion models.

When we had finished with my loom, their leaders pulled out potholder looms for them to use.  We moved into the dining room and spread out all over the tables and floor.  Each girl picked out different color combinations.  ( Except the twins.  Even though they were working separately and had not even looked at what the other was doing, the colors were the same. )  Some were very conscious of color and pattern, carefully placing each looper in just the right order.  Others took a more spontaneous approach, mixing and matching with abandon.  All turned out beautifully.

It was so much fun to teach them to weave and to see their excitement at learning.  Their leaders and I helped them get started and then they just took off.  Most of them understood the under-over concept and got the mechanics down pretty quickly.  Some used the hooks that came with the looms, and some preferred their fingers.  I brought out some potholders that my daughter made many years ago when she was their age.  (I still use them.)  They loved the fact that they would be able to make something truly useful.

All too soon it was time for them to go home.  About half of them finished their potholders.  The rest took them home to finish.  I heard that some made many more at home.  It made me so happy to share something I love so much with them.  I hope some of them continue weaving in the future.

Two weeks later the doorbell rang and there were the girls with a pile of thank you cards.  They were made with construction paper, lots of glitter and love.  I cherish them.  And I will remember them for a long, long time.   I still have glitter on the carpet no matter how many times it is vacuumed.

The silk quilt - the gift

Today I am grateful for knees.  This is a "you don't appreciate something until you've lost it" type of gratefulness.  I hadn't used my spinning wheel for some months until yesterday.  I finally had a whole day to just do what I wanted.  So spinning was on the agenda.  I sat down with some of the dyed and carded 30-year old-wool and went into that peaceful bliss that spinning gives me.  A couple hours later, lunch called.  I know better than to spin without taking a break, but I was having too much fun.  This morning I woke up with a very stiff knee.  My wheel has double treadles, but only one knee was stiff - very stiff and a little sore.  Walking was difficult.   Fortunately, the only cure for that is more spinning, this time with rest breaks - and some ibuprofen.

Now for the final installment of the silk quilt story.  My mother and my mother-in-law had finished the quilt and decided that the only appropriate thing to do was to give it to my daughter when she married.  She was the first grandchild for both of them.  So several years later when she had found her forever companion, it was time for the silk quilt to go to it's final home. 

Quilts were a traditional gift for close family members, so my daughter expected some kind of quilt from the grandmothers;  but she was amazed when she received a king-sized sampler quilt made of silk.  It was beautiful.  It was big.  We hung it up and used it as part of the decorations at the reception.  She received instructions on how to care for it and faithfully follows them.

The grandmothers were now experts at piecing quilt blocks and didn't want to stop their collaboration.  They decided that together they would make a wedding quilt for each of my four children.  They made them ahead of time, just in case anything happened to either one of them.  This was a fortunate idea.  They were both able to come to the next wedding, but they were getting older.  The third quilt was presented to the happy couple without them.  The fourth child has not married yet, but he was presented with his quilt when he bought his first home so he could thank his grandmothers properly while they were still with us.  Shortly after, one of them passed away.  But they will always be remembered by their quilts.

The silk quilt: the sewing

Today I am grateful for my warp board.  It is a tool used to measure out the warp for my loom.  My husband made it for me many years ago when I got my first loom.  It can measure a warp up to 10 yards, and that is as long as I ever can stand to put on.  He was working on his Masters degree and needed something to do to relax.  He was going to the Navel Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.  (You don't have to be in the Navy to go there, but you do have to be military and be selected.  You can't just decide to go there.  It is run with military precision.  You work all day every day and the competition is intense.  If you don't do well, it goes on your military record and that is used to determine promotions.)  He and a friend both had wives who were weavers and needed warp boards, so they decided to make some in the wood shop, just for fun.  They both had very happy wives.

Now back to the story of the silk quilt.  My mother received all the materials for the quilt.  She is an accomplished seamstress.  She made clothes for me and my sisters while we were growing up.  She even made jeans for my brothers so they could have special stitching on the pockets.  If she could do all those things, surely she could piece some quilt blocks, or so I thought.

I made quilts partly because all the sewing was straight lines - easy.  But there were some tricks to getting all the lines to match and the corners to be square.  My mother had made quilts before, but they were mostly applique or whole cloth quilts, not pieced.  I felt that her sewing skills were so much more advanced than mine,  if I could do it , surely she could.  I was wrong.

My mother viewed the quilt I had designed a a huge puzzle that she didn't know how to do.  I felt that I had given her plenty of directions.  She decided to invite a friend to help her, another woman with tremendous sewing skills, but little piecing experience.  Her friend happened to be my mother-in-law.  They did not understand the design.  They didn't know how to sew the blocks together.  They struggled to cut out the pieces.  They had trouble deciding what color to use where.  The design had 2 versions of each block, so they decided that they would each make one of each block.  They worked together to divide out the colors.  They helped each other figure out how the blocks went together.  They did not consult any quilting how-to books for tips and hints, even though they were sitting on their book shelves.

Finally, after several years work, the top was sewn.  My sister, who made her living making wedding dresses at the time, got a big piece of white silk for the back.  After all that work, nothing else would do.  Then the fun, for them, began.  The quilt was put into the frame and they worked together to quilt it.  All the puckers were quilted out and it became a thing of great beauty.  The binding was attached and it was finished.  Now, what would they do with it?

The silk quilt - the handoff

Today I am grateful for Meyer lemons.  I had heard about them from Martha Stewart and other chefs on TV.  They sounded wonderful, but I never saw them in stores where I lived.  Last week I was in WalMart and there they were in a little bag - Meyer lemons.  I bought some and went online to find some recipes.  I made Lemon Pudding Cake and Chicken Piccatta.  They were both amazing.  I love the sweetness combined with the tartness.

Let's continue the silk quilt story.  The quilt was designed and I was ready to start sewing when our family had a major change of plans.  My husband was in the Army at the time and he was offered a chance to go back to school and get his PhD.  It was an opportunity too good to pass up.  So we were moving again.  This time we were going to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.  As I considered what I would be doing while he was going to school, I thought maybe it would be a good time for me to finish my degree. 

We were married while we were both going to college.  But I took a break after my junior year to have a baby, and he graduated and was commissioned into the Army, and we started moving around the world, and more children came and I didn't get back to my school work.  Now that I had four children, I felt that it was time to finish.

I applied to Iowa State and was accepted.  They even allowed me to pay in-state tuition because my husband was in the Army.  I changed my major, so it would take me the entire three years we were there to graduate.  I was very excited and absolutely terrified.  But I felt that I had to take advantage of this opportunity.  What else was there to do in a little town in the middle of Iowa?  (Ames is actually smack dab in the middle of Iowa.)

There was no way I was going to be able to get that quilt finished while I was in Iowa.  Going to school full time and taking care of 4 children would pretty much take up all of my time.  So I talked to my mother and we decided that she would just have to make the quilt herself.  I sent her the fabric, the design, the patterns for all the blocks, and wished her well.  I hoped she was up to the challenge.

The Silk Quilt - the design

Today I am grateful for robins.  We don't have very many who live near us year round, but in the spring big flocks of them descend on our yard and stay for a week or so.  You know that spring will be arriving shortly when you look out the window and see 30-40 robins in the front yard.  This year they came about a week ago and are still here.  I think they started their trip early because of the warm weather and then it got cold.  It is supposed to be warm again next week, so they will probably move on soon.  I like them a lot.  Their traveling companion, the starlings, I don't like as much.  They travel in big noisy flocks and pick one big tree to settle in.  The racket is very annoying, plus they like to attack our bird feeder even though they are too big for it.  Noisy greedy birds I can do without.

Now on to the story about the silk quilt.  I had the silk, but what should the quilt look like?  At that time I was very excited about designing my own quilts.  There weren't as many quilt books then as there are now, and most of them were just block books.  I didn't like making a whole bunch of the same block, so I decided to make a sampler quilt.  There would be 2 versions of each block.  I drew the quilt out on graph paper and then colored it in just in graphite pencil to get the values.  I wanted the quilt to be more intense in the middle and then fade out to the edges.  The blocks would be there, but they would be indistinct because of the coloring.  I felt like it was something new for me.  It would be exciting to build the quilt from the center out, deciding on the colors for each block as I went along.  I talked to my mom about it and she OKed the design.  I also decided to get some very thin interfacing to back the silk with so it would be easier to sew.  I was all set to start the project.